BillsBayou

So long as the coordinates are correct, you're free to make the hide spot as misleading as you want.

I like this idea. It's very likely you'll be abducted by the "Visitors", stash the ammo can on their spaceship and your reviewer won't approve the cache because you didn't get the owner's permission.

Hey, Monkey Toes. Have you seen my Little Piggies? By the way, call the Burnt Mill Cache "Ruin Of The Mill"

With that in mind, I hope you respond. The cache that gives you smiley number one is going to give you clues to cache number two. Cache One is difficult to find and you need to pay attention to the clues I'm working up. Once you find it, the cache house will have a clue to the bonus cache. The clue will include a site tube I'm mounting so that cachers can view the location of the bonus cache; essentially, a permanently mounted pipe. The Bonus Cache will be a mere 2000 feet away (chrome feet). However, it'll be a 6.5 mile driving trip to actually get there (hiking and biking are impossible/impracticable/unimaginable/illegal). The entire cache will be linked by a short story I've written. The idea of finding a bonus cache will fit in with the concept of the story. Kind of a story within a story that results in a cache within a cache. Now that I think of it, more than one bonus cache would fit in here. Hmmm...... Given all the time I've spent on the concept, adding another mini-story-bonus-cache (or two) wouldn't be all that difficult. I just need a way to situate another cache or two in the area. Three or four smilies on one cache may be pushing it. Or for another concept begging for input: I may want to just make Cache One a requisite cache for Caches Two and Three with Cache Two a requisite cache for Cache Four. I haven't placed a cache since Katrina. Putting out four caches at once would go a long way to getting me caught up.

Welcome to GA (Geocachers Anonymous) The 12 Suggested Steps of Geocachers Anonymous (not exactly 12-steps to STOP Geocaching, because who would want THAT?) 1. We admitted we were powerless over the urge to hide and find tupperwear--that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (Jeremy?) could restore us to a cache-rich existence. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our distant hides over to the care of cache-adopters as we understood them. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, our tupperwear, Moun10bike coins, and little yellow Jeeps. 5. Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our DNFs. 6. Were entirely ready to have fellow cachers point out all our defects of coordinates. 7. Humbly asked forum admins to remove our flame posts. 8. Made a list of all persons we had led astray, and became willing to send swag to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others, or cost more than Dollar Store swag. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly edit our listings. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with satellites, as we understood them, praying only for knowledge of a good WAAS signal, and a good supply of AA's to carry that out. 12. Having had a good signal day, awaken as the result of these signals, we tried to carry this message to Geoholics, and to practice these principles in all our hides. (With all appologies and respect to AA, their members, and their goals)

I'm looking to do a cache that's difficult enough to be a 5 on difficulty. When you find the cache, you can sign the log book, trade, etc... The cache will point you to a bonus round where you can get a second find on the cache. It'll either point you to the next cache container or the first stage of a short multi-cache. Seems like a good idea to me. Thus, according to my theory that all good caching ideas have already been discussed , please Markwell me (either by thread or cache).

We should get prizes for being the first one on a thread for saying "At least they didn't blow it up." By the way. Look around, there are two threads on this already.

The 30-Second Chew Chew Cache. Place a compartment beneath the tracks at a traffic intersection. The top of the compartment is a sliding panel connected by cable to the traffic drop gate. Finders can only access the cache when a train is bearing down upon them.

"Guaranteed humorless to someone."

That wasn't a "hoard", that was my trunk. It was swag. Honest. I was trading up.

Space Shuttle Cache Idea (Since I live near the facility that makes those wonderful foam covered external fuel tanks... ...yeah, those foam covered fuel tanks) I'll take all the responsibility of setting up the cache. It'll be hidden in the insullation foam on one of the tanks for the next shuttle launch. It'll fall off. Trust me, it'll fall off. Now, go find it.

Well excuse me for getting you into a snit. I'm having trouble getting your findstats.exe to run on more than 30 geocaches without blowing up. I cannot seem to get GSAK to produce a file that your program can digest. So here's where I went wrong: My input: 29.811416666, -90.41588333 29.8234, -90.0065 29.903967, -90.115567 29.9228, -90.127667 29.95125, -90.07868333 29.9591, -90.07121666 29.965583, -90.148233 29.983566666, -90.09208333 30.0075, -90.21145 30.025483, -90.193067 30.02955, -90.208617 30.362667, -90.066983 30.527517, -89.682 35.168517, -83.377417 35.4277, -83.446517 35.586333, -83.838333 35.960417, -83.922933 35.9668, -83.1841 35.969317, -83.18685 35.979333, -83.187617 36.008533, -83.0943 36.011233, -83.836217 36.034833, -83.322917 36.036583, -83.433933 36.040383, -83.349517 36.06185, -83.472583 36.096733, -83.547733 36.098967, -83.5523 36.11675, -83.490533 My output: Average of radians (back to degree,min format): N 33 18.861, W 86 32.836 Your output: Centroid: N 33 18.911, W 86 32.811 I used some caches from my GSAK since FindStats.exe requires a gpx file. It was the quickest way for me to generate one. I have caches filed away for the New Orleans, LA area and the Gatlinburg, TN area. The two values are different by 450 feet just outside of Birmingham. I was happy with the result and posted what I felt to be the correct answer. Perhaps I need some wilder numbers to get the 100 miles difference which you mention. I've done enough damage here. (*editted to correct word usage)

After exhaustive playing around with the Haversine function I cannot detect any significant difference between my approach and Fizzy's "Centroid" value. Discrepancies between the two can be attributed to rounding error. The answer is actually quite simple: It's the average your coordinates in radians. To convert to radians: Degree * Pi / 180 To convert to degrees: Radian * 180 / Pi Excel should be able to do this for you.

I can see the description on this one. Cache is located in Angola Prison. To find the cache, commit a felony (your choice), wait for police. They'll take you to the cache.

Office of the Attorney General of the State of Tennessee Maybe we can report this guy to the authorities in Tennessee? How is that done? The auction states "THIS IS NOT A LOTTERY, RAFFLE, ETC." but that doesn't mean it's not illegal in some way. I'm sure it's in violation of one of the "ETC" laws.

It's your job to be paranoid. Someone says "suspect item" and you're in Bomb Disposal Mode. If I were to make a bomb, I'd make it look like a fire hydrant; a utility box; a garden gnome... But then, I don't make bombs. So don't come down on us for being happy that you didn't blow up our game pieces. That's your job, and we're glad you're not doing it when doing so is not necessary. Yes, it's your job to blow up suspicious looking items when you cannot determine it's origin or function or whatever it is that determines an item's fragmented fate. We're all suspicious looking individuals doing things in public that make people take notice of our furtive ways. I accept that. However, what we're doing is, for the most part, legal, and we're doing it in a "Minding our own business" fashion. So, yeah, I understand your point of view about walking up to suspicious items in your foot-thick kevlar suit, but AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T BLOW THIS ONE UP.

I found the following link! Whole Buncha Calculations enter two points and it'll tell you the distance, bearing, and midpoint! I'm going to go through the source to figure out how to put this into an Excel spreadsheet. All you'd need then is to enter the points in column A, and run out to the right a thousand columns to where the distance between midpoints approach zero. That column of points will all be pointing to the middle of your plane.... (maybe )

I was thinking about this last night. If you could caculate the midpoint between two points, the you'd have the center of your two finds. At three points, you have a triangle. The mid point of each line forms a new set of three points. This is a smaller triangle. Find the midpoints between each of these three new points. Now continue the midpoint process until the distance between all three points approaches 0. This process gives you the midpoint of the three points. I say "approaches 0". For our purposes, zero represents the largest distance between midpoints that can no longer be measured on our GPSr; two points have the same decimal degree Lat/Lon on the GPSr. At four points, you don't have four midpoints, you have 6. Think of a square. Draw lines between opposite corners. That's where you get two extra midpoints. Much larger than three or four? Well, for a number of points, N, the number of vertices joining the points in a k-partite graph is calculated using the formula N(N+1) ------- 2N Where N >= 1 It's not quite exponential (1, 3, 6, 10, 15,...) but it does get ugly. For 1000 finds, you'd have to calculate 500500 midpoints over and over and over again until the largest distance between two points is close enough to zero that we can stop. It's nice that you have a linear order of complexity (based on distance) once you get your first set of midpoints. That linear portion of the problem makes me wonder if some math whiz couldn't calculate this out as as single Calculus problem. I have no idea what happens if any two of these points are antipodal. Time to do some more research into areas about which I know nothing.

Hey! There's a Waymarkin forum? Well whata ya know? I like my Earthcache. People are still hitting it. I'd hate to think of what would have happened to it if were over at the WM.com site (Won'tMatter.com). I"ve been to the WM site. I'm not sure what it is. I started reading, but I couldn't figure out how I could contribute. So I left and haven't been back. I was thinking about doing another Earthcache, but if it's a WM feature, who cares anymore?

For two points, the midpoint is skewed by the curve of the Earth. Two points on the equator would have an average (the midpoint) that also lies on the equator. This is not because they are on the same latitude. This is because they are on the same great circle. Two points on the same latitude but further north will have a mid point that is significantly further north. The midpoint longitude will be in the middle (my understanding) where you'd expect to find it, but the latitude starts moving north. The further north the two points are, the greater the degree of northerly shift in the midpoint. Get a globe and run a string between two cities with the same northerly latitude. Now pull the string tight. The middle of the string will shift north. This is why international flights don't appear to fly in straight lines on maps. They DO however appear more straight on globes. The formula for this is beyond me. The distance between points is determined using the haversine function. You'd have to go into spherical geometry to understand it. I never got beyond calculus. Non-Euclidian geometry classes were for the math majors (or masochists).

I'm no lawyer. I certainly don't know what laws are being violated here. However, I did find this: Link to securities fraud

It smells like an illegal lottery. I reported it to Safe Harbor.

No offense taken. I'm still close with his widow. I'm trying to get her into the game. Maybe I'll let her start the cache.

Me too! And that's why I started this thread. Cachers with full mobility are really blessed as anyone with full mobility. FYI, my dear cousin, Joe, passed away some time back. He's presently in an above ground crypt. I'm considering him the most mobility impared relative. I'm going to do a cache that'll include him in this in some way. He'd get a kick out of it. I'll call it "Jumpin' Joe's Jitterbug". I'll make it a night cache.

Here's an idea sure to get under HIS skin. Go around and change all the containers after he's posted his pictures. Follow-up cachers will look at his pictures and wonder "Well what the hell is HE holding?"